


A Kiss

by rosalind25



Series: Not That Woman [2]
Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 18:55:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15646884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosalind25/pseuds/rosalind25
Summary: Marian knows where her heart lies, but not where this will lead.A series of three short vignettes set in S2. This one takes place in Ep 11, when Guy discovers that she is the Night Watchman. Here Marian makes a decision.





	A Kiss

Marian has never been afraid of him. In all their past encounters, except for one, when she’s fought him in her Night Watchman guise she has been his match, with her speed, her agility, and - always - her ability to surprise him.

She’s afraid now. This time, like the other, they fight in an enclosed space. Here she doesn’t have enough freedom of movement to employ her tricks to the full. Here, his size and his violence, as he slams her down, are terrifying. She is fighting for her life.

He comes for her again, pushing her to the floor. There’s real power in the punch to her back; it knocks the breath from her. She stumbles away, trying to regain her balance, but quicker than she might have thought he charges her down again, enraged. She finds it disturbing, this side of Guy directed at her. Gone the veneer of arrogance she can so easily crack. Gone the craving she sometimes glimpses, not only for her body, but to be loved in that same wholehearted way that he does.

She is overcome; he’s too strong, too angry.

_ Will he kill me? Here, today?  _

She fears the curved dagger; memory burns in the scar at her side.

He doesn’t. Instead he recoils; he flees from her and from the truth, which is too terrible for him to confront.

Now she sits in her room, waiting.

Of course she’s only got herself to blame. Robin had warned her not to try and help the villagers, extracting a promise that she wouldn’t do anything. The flimsy loophole she’d made in that promise meant that she’d lied to Robin as well, justifying it to herself with what she’d been trying to achieve. The same way as she’d justified coming back to the castle.

It arrests her, the thought that outsiders might question the morality of what she’s doing, just as she judges Guy. Her thoughts swirl around this, telling herself that it’s different; that what she does is for others whereas Guy cares only for himself, and for power.

But even as she thinks this, she knows it to be unfair. He truly cares for her. He came back, to fight beside her when Nottingham was about to fall. Despite her hard words to him that morning, without the Sheriff Guy has shown that he can be a brave and decent man. It gives her a glimmer of understanding of the trap he’s in: the desire to do right, ripped out of him at every turn like some noisome weed. As when Winchester came for her. Even then.

Which shows her - oh so clearly - that the Sheriff must be stopped, whatever the cost. Too much at stake, too many lives. The motive makes it right, all that she’s doing.

But some days, this doesn’t quite ring true. The thought makes her uncomfortable.

                                               -----------------------------------------------------------------------

_Robin, where are you?_

But it isn’t Robin who saves her. It’s Allan, and Guy. Allan disguised as the Night Watchman, and Guy lying to the Sheriff, berated and beaten for incompetency.

He asks her for a favour in return.

“Anything.”

_Surely_ _he_ _can’t_ _ask_ _me_ _to_ _marry_ _him_ \-   _not_ _again_.  And if he does, well, she knows that ‘anything’ is a lie like all the others, and that she will find her way out of it. _Damn_ _him_ – _why_ _must_ _even_ _gratitude_ _be_ _complicated_?

But instead, those words – _make_ _this_ _place_ _bearable_ – and that sweet, tentative smile; they crack at the edges of her resolve to deceive him, but they don’t splinter it.

Her own smile mingles relief and gratitude. She steps toward him, and plants a kiss softly upon his cheek.

 


End file.
